Collaboration Project - workspace


This is the thought I had after reading some chapters from "Free for All, How Linux and the free software movement undercut the high-tech titans" (Jing)



In this study, we also try to find some factors which can play an important roles to transform a group of regular anticipants to reach its maximal capacity. However, it is hard to find such documents or examples since most famous examples of collaboration come from highly respected and talented people. But we think the open source movement may give us a glimpse into what we are looking for since most participants are just regular but experienced programmers. Following are some of the characteristics that we think are important for the collaboration of the participants to make the open source movement a such successful one.

(1)A need of a strong leader who knows how to guide, organize the whole project.
Every great idea has a leader who can produce a system to sutain it. During their entire development, both Linux and GNU have such leaders. "At the top of the pyramid was Linus Torvalds. Many Linux developers treated him like the king of all he surveyed......He was gracious about sharing his system with the world and he never lorded int over anyone. He was always gracious in giving credit to others and noted that much of Linux was just a clone fo UNIX. All of this made him easy to read and thus influential" Many believes his great trick was his decision to avoid the mantle of power. He wrote in 1992, "Here's my standing on 'keeping control' in 2 words (three?): I won't."

(2)Every ones are treated equally and have the same opportunities to make the contribution.
This is the phenomenon what we have observed in almost every successful stories on collaboration. The progress and development in both GNU and Linux at their full swing stage depends the contribution from numerous programmers. There are no restrictions on where you should go. Every one choose the area that he/she is interested. This equality of freedom releases their capacity and power of creation to the optimal level since what he/she is doing is not only interesting but also what he/she is good at.

(3)All the participants have a strong movtivation and believes towards the same goals.
We observed that for a project to keep its momentum, one of the factors is that all the participants have about the same goal and motivation even they are not equal in their talents. Stallman's manifesto is a good example to illustrate the goal and alsot the motivations of free source movement. He says" I consider that the golden rules requires that if I like a program I must share it with other people who like it. Software sellers want to divide the users and conquer them, making each user agree not to share with others. I refuse to break solidarity with other users int this way....So that I can continue to use computers without dishonor, I have decided to put together a sufficient body of free software so that I will be able to get along without any software that is not free". It is such a belief that unit all the participants together


(4)Peoples with the different talents can tackle the problem more efficiently.

(5)Complete transparency on the progress of the whole project.
There is secrete information here, every bit of progress are made openly.
As for GNU and Linus developers, they could take software for free, but if they started circulating some new software built with the code, they would have to donate their changes back to the project. If you ever ship a version of the project, you must include all of the source code. This kind of transparency greatly enhance the collaboration, let others have a complete knowledge on what is going go so that the individual can make his/her own best judgement on he/she is going to do and not waste time to reinvite the wheels.

(6)Establishment of strong personal ties with the project

We observed that the individuals may need to delevope some kind of personal ties in order to him/her to sustain his/her motivation and creativity. One of the main reasons why so many developers are so loyal and hooked to the project is that they know the Linus and GNU softwares will always be theirs. They write neat features and plug them into the Linus kernela and GNU without worrying that Torvalds or Stallman would yank the rug out from under them. The General Purpose Licence (GPL) was contract that will last long into future. It was the promise that bound them together.



Outline:

1) Introduction

2) Traditional Great Groups and Future Model of Great Groups

     Traditional

        - problems

     Linux

        - problems

      Future

        - fixes problems

        - new problems

3) Concepts and Systems to Support new model of Great Groups

      KM, Info delivery, Filtering, EDC?, Critique capture / distribution, etc.

4) Conclusion, references 

 

GG Qualities:

   1) Strong, good leader. 

      - (make 4 happen)

      - Hire only great people

      - provide (3)

      - highly devoted

   2) High motivation / moral for members

      - Feel important

      - Unifying Goal / Have enemy

      - work is its own reward

      - self directed

      - devotion to work at expense of outside life

      - (4)

   3) Good working environment

      - Isolation from bureaucracy (and other hassles)

      - Get needed materials.

      - leave members with enough freedom to be creative

      - (4)

      - Energized, fun environment

   4) Right person at the right job. 

   5) Critiquing

 

Conversion Grid

















































 

     Category  
     Traditional
      Linux 
       Next Step




     Great People 
      Small to Medium group of very talented ppl. 
      Small Core + big extension 
      Small core + big extension 
 



       Feeling Important 
       Make great stuff 
       Member of community has prestige. Also core group is famous 
       Core group prestige, widely known contributer in the big extension    
  

 

       Unifying goal 
       An enemy or a cause 
       Many goals, sometimes in conflict. Most are productive.
       Linux model, but specific enemies / goals are directed by corporate propaganda to smaller groups 



 
      Strong Leader 
      Common see the list 



 
      Protection 
      Protection from interference of upper management 
      Solved boss issue. Hurt by much info from large base 
      Protect contributors from both 




      Critique 
      P2P B2P but all F2F 
      P2P Primarily remote Open to great extension 
      P2P Both F2F and Remote which should operate seemlessly. Critiques

available widely. 		




       Physical location 
       Seperate area for GG. 
       Widely distributed internationally 
       Members are possibly both local and distributed





  

Future model:

Impacts of being distributed are minimized

Instant sharing of information among team members

KM systems fillters and stores info.

Openness to contributors outside core group

.Surplus talent in the larger organization.     

Enemies / Goals are customized (not totally different) for each potential GG within the larger organization. Have a propaganda department.



Curves (all assume all the factors are good with quality of people being a variable) Curves address communication cost:

normal people: add more, it goes up, then peaks then falls.

great ppl: same but can achieve great group.

Great ppl (not enough for gg) the add normal people.

Same but we introduce cool technology and stuff to all for gg.

collabfinal.doc (DOC)
Jing's email: jkfang@hotmail.com


Collaboration Independent Research Project